"Moderates" Again Hijack Spending Cuts

If you want to know why Congress can't cut spending, simply look to those GOP jellyfish. As Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) explains:

"For the great majority in my conference, they'd like to do some aggressive things on spending," he said. "But we need 51 votes. You might have 48 votes, but that's not 51, and it's as simple as that."

Captain's Quarters explains the mess the "moderates" are making:

In other words, we can thank the same "moderates" who helped bring us the Gang of 14 for this exercise in federal growth, as well as a few others. For instance, Arlen Specter apparently has been reading a little too much of Tom DeLay's press releases. He told the press that Congress is now "beyond cutting the fat and beyond the bone. We're down to the marrow." Specter wants to introduce more expansion in health care, education, and worker safety (by "billions of dollars above the president's request") along with the higher spending on security issues.

Milton Friedman penned a WSJ editorial a year or two ago where he mentioned that there is a publicly acceptable level of budget deficit. I'm convinced that the only way to reduce spending is to actually increase the budget deficit from today's very acceptable levels (approx. 2.6% of GDP) to somewhere around 3.5%-4.0% of GDP. Only then will Congress get serious about reducing spending.